


Two fighting dogs

by offer



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Childhood, Discipline, Dog Pound DID happen, Gen, Physical Abuse, Play and Power, Punishment, Relationship Study, Siblings, family trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:48:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27072997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/offer/pseuds/offer
Summary: Three children, a woman, a man, and countless unnamed people in a house. In the house, there is a cage.
Kudos: 13





	Two fighting dogs

**Author's Note:**

> A possible myth about Dog Pound.

  
  
  


Laughter echoes through the hallway, bumping against each porcelain antique and gold-rimmed fine china. Shadows flit against walls and dip into the juts of mahogany columns and rails and crown molding. Flames expertly contained by the fireplace on the floor below lend them their shape, and they dance and dance across and along the lit golden light fixtures and up against the grand chandelier, melting at every beat into the dark of three towering, arched windows before surfacing again.

"You're gonna get in there," a boy's voice taunts. "Get in there! Ruff ruff!"

"No!"

They reach one of the stairways, and the taller boy plants his feet there just before the younger. The taller one holds his arms out as wide as he can. "Nope- nope, not- not this way- huh, trapped already," he mocks with a bright smile in between big huffs.

They've been sprinting around this wing of the mansion for a while now, at least an hour, maybe two. With the woman on the opposite end taking care of arrangements for tomorrow's brunch, their usual caretakers busy with managing the kitchen for the night ("Oh, they can take care of themselves," the woman said with a swipe of her hand to one of the passively concerned assistants), and the man somewhere far away, they both bet on not stopping anytime soon.

"Out of my way," the younger barks. "Asswipe!" he adds for good measure.

In a second, the smaller one, about a full head's worth shorter than the other, swipes a finger straight into the other's neck and bolts for the other staircase across the room. He hears the older boy spitting up between coughs, "Roman, you fucking- we said the other stairs weren't allowed! We said- Ro-ro!" The younger boy sprints down the stairs, his legs speeding down each step with no thought, only pure adrenaline and muscle memory.

The older rubs his hand against his neck and ekes out the last cough, then breathes through his teeth and resumes the chase. He rushes to the mouth of the other staircase and leads one foot in front of the other, his feet still a little too large for his ankles and his ankles a little too slim for his legs. He feels his face burn red when hears the younger boy yip from somewhere below, "Won't catch me!"

"Little shit," he mutters with his head down, panting while trying to catch his breath when he reaches the bottom of the steps. Then, suddenly, he hears the iron latch of their grand entryway click, and he feels a freezing shock through his body.

He's in trouble.

He jerks his head up, and finds himself facing a cracked-open door into a raining night. Raindrops sneak in and collect on the marbled entryway. He stares into the floor as if he might be able to bore craters into it, craters that if he made them big enough could swallow him whole, and he feels it, he feels the rush again and his throat constricting and he clenches his fists so hard he feels the press of his manicured nails in the lines of his palm.

From into the night, the little one flies through their always-cut, cut by somebody else, lawn, now slick with fresh rainfall. He runs off, taking care to muddy every inch of his oxfords and scrape their soles into every irregular hill of dirt beneath his feet. He runs with his limbs flailing, smiling and giggling in the delight of mischief. Every dirty shoe polished by other hands, every jacket and pair of pants pressed and chemical-cleaned somewhere by somebody he didn't care about. His head of hair to be touched and held and scrubbed clean by another. He opens his mouth with joy to catch a few of the drops that land on his tongue.

Then suddenly, he catches another light flicker on in the connecting hallway between the adjacent wing and theirs. He widens his eyes and makes a thoughtless, hopeless swipe at his shoe while he stumbles back to the stone ground and eventually to the entrance, to the now-closed entrance he rushed out of only moments earlier. When he reaches it, he barely hears from beyond his own heavy, high-pitched breathing, an adult voice. He presses his ear against the large wooden door. He thinks to himself that he can hear the older boy's stuttering and fidgeting from beyond it.

The older one feels his entire body stiffen when he hears heels clacking from the hallway to his left. He carefully puts one foot in front of the other, and turns his body the opposite direction as if to make himself appear to be interrupted on his way to somewhere more pressing.

"Kendall, you're here. Please get Romulus and Siobhan. You are all to come to the main dining hall."

The boy shifts his eyes downward and loops his finger into one of his buttonholes, almost like he might fix it, but he only retracts then loops, retracts then loops his thumb in again, using another finger to pick at the skin of it. "The- the hall, Romulus, Siobhan. Okay. Yes. Ma'am."

A pause. "Your father wants you all right away, Kendall."

"My- my father? Dad's here?"

"Oh, yes. He just arrived. He requests a family dinner."

The boy's palms begin sweating, his upper lip twitching, he digs his fingers into his palm more, presses his palm into his fingers more. He releases one fist for only a second, only to hook it to the cuff of his blazer, and now he digs at the corduroy with his thumb like it's a stubborn scab.

His eyes dart across the wooden slats along the ground and follow each swirl and knot like a labyrinth. He pieces together one possible reason for another— they couldn't get back inside, they lost the key, no— he lost the key— Roman lost a key— Siobhan locked them outside— Siobhan lost the key— there was no key— Roman lost his shoe, they had to look for it, he had to look for it—

"Kendall, if you please. We would not want to keep your father waiting."

"Yes, I'll- I will go get them," he says with a nod and his eyes somewhere distant and toward the floor, his body turning while his mind stays spinning down into the curves of the wood. He brings himself to the stairs, one stair before another, and begins to hurry himself when he mumbles a quick 'ma'am' on his way up.

He speed walks to the last door on the left, and pushes his hand on the handle in a rush, letting himself in.

A small girl startles on the other side of the room, almost jumping. "Hey! No coming in! Knocking, hello?" she hisses in a whisper with her head turned, but her hands pressed to the window before her. She snaps her head back to it and begins giggling, so intrigued she even puts her nose to it, like she's already forgotten about the fright from just a second ago.

The boy rushes up to her and takes a look out himself, hovering over the little girl and glancing at her delighted expression before squinting out into the night. He finds where her trail of vision leads: a little hopping and shivering figure below and to the left of them, just at the edge of sight. The older boy exhales and grumbles, his fingers wrinkling themselves into tense curves and back out again, like they want to curl up into fists but against his wishes.

A tug at his sleeve, then a pull. The little girl turns away from the window only to investigate the slight, barely noticeable, but noticeable to her, fresh red swipe at the hem. She tilts her head up to face the taller one, and whispers, curious with a hint of mockery, like a taunt she might pull depending on the answer, "What's that stuff on your blazer?"

The taller boy scoffs and pulls his arm back as his answer. He keeps his head turned to the window.

The girl pulls at the boy's jacket again, then pulls his wrist while she begins to walk toward her door. "To Dad?"

"Yeah, Shiv, to Dad, but we need to-"

"That's Roman being bad. He should get touched for doing something bad."

Finally, this gets the boy's attention, and he begins letting the rest of his limbs be pulled by the little girl along with the one. "What? What's touched?"

"The slipper."

The older boy fumbles over a few syllables before pulling his arm back, then straightens his blazer and overtakes the little girl's steps. She trails just behind him, lengthening the stride covered between each small foot to keep up. She watches from behind as the older boy's shoulders begin tensing higher and higher up to his earlobes as he approaches the staircase with tepid feet.

Then, they both hunch up at the sound of heavy and certain steps approaching, and by instinct prop up their spines and retreat in a shadow just beyond the top of the stairs.

"Where are they? I've a headache the size of the fu- Jesus, the Empire State Building, no sleep from a goddamn all-nighter about some fu- Christ, excuse my language, God-knows-what deal, taken hours on a plane to get here, and they're somehow nowhere in my own home— where are my children?"

"My apologies for the delay, sir. I believe Kendall is retrieving the others."

"Enough, I'll get the children myself," the man states, smacking his lips together before a yell. "Kendall! Romulus! Siobhan!"

The older boy begins the descent down about a stair every other second, his head dipped into his chest, while the little girl pushes past him.

"Daddy!"

"Siobhan, my little darling," he bends himself down to catch the girl in an embrace. "There you are, then." At the same time, he snaps his vision to the small figure now standing at the foot of the stairs. The boy stands there with his arms ironed and pressed straight to his sides and his head dipped toward the ground.

The boy says nothing, and waits.

"Kendall."

"Hi Dad," the boy, taller and older than the other two, almost a teenager now, yet still small in his own right, mumbles.

"Speak, boy. Properly."

His chins moves up only a millimeter, and he dares to attempt meeting the man's eyes, before repeating himself, "Hi- hello, Dad."

The man lets his arms lower from around the little girl, who skitters to the side behind his legs and peers at the boy before her. All of their profiles are illuminated by the glow of a long-going fire, which is now being stoked by one of their caretakers who first came to summon them, tending dutifully to her tasks and position, while the family plays its performance out in the background. A different scene every day, with variations in length, with one actor out and another in, at another time, yet the familiar mood, the same environment, the same marks hit. The same themes, the same stories.

"Well," the man straightens his legs, rising up and looking over the two children now at his feet. He turns his head. "Why don't you come give your old man a welcome, Kendall?"

The boy takes a step toward the man. He barely hears the only other sound in the room, the crackle of sparks from the fireplace, past the rushing slam of his heart. His small hands twitch, he nearly fails to keep them straightened as he takes another step, but succeeds, and he faces this challenge every second in the few beats between him and the man. Each time, the little boy succeeds.

He reaches the man's hip, and wraps his arms around the man's legs, making sure he stiffens them just enough not to squeeze too tightly, just the appropriate amount, enough to make contact without too much desperation. It's only been three weeks.

He sniffs the man's cologne and squints his eyes into it, catching it in his hair, like he hopes it may rub off onto him too.

In a steady movement, the man bends so slightly to face the boy closer to his height. He pats his palm onto the boy's head, and smooths his hair. "Kendall," he says. "Where is Romulus?"

The little girl, still standing just behind the man's knees, watches the sides of the older boy's mouth pinch in the way they do when he knows something he wishes he didn't, and when he's turning the thought in his mind whether or not to tell. When he's weighing his options, which one might be more honest, which one might be more good. Which one would make him say something the man would want to hear. The little girl keeps a smile to herself, satisfied that she learned fast how to kill these worries before they grew in her too. She always thought the boy was silly, and sad, for never learning this.

The man snaps his back straight, and gives his suit jacket a harsh and firm tug. "Kendall, now."

The little girl steps back, startled by a near-blow of the back of the man's fist, but catches herself out of practiced impulse. The small heel of her shoe clicks against the wooden floor, louder than she means it.

"Siobhan, what are you doing standing there? Go up with your brother."

She furrows her eyebrows immediately at this, and her small cheeks redden. She feels her insides shake without the words to say why. She only knows she now wishes she slammed her foot instead. She refuses to stand there with him. She runs out from behind the man and toward the large wooden doors standing resolute and unassuming in their background, and pulls at the iron handle.

The man snaps his head toward the door, opening his mouth as if to smack the small girl with a chastising shout, before his neck stiffens when he sees a small boy, clothes and oxfords drenched and muddied, come in from the rain. He whips his head around as if to search for another surprise before it catches him, and yells daggers at the woman still standing at the fireplace, "What the fuck is the meaning of this? Who was responsible for them?"

"Sir, I-"

"Get Caroline- get Caroline now," he growls out. He jerks his head back and forth between the three small children. Behind them, the woman from earlier slips through the background and shuts the wooden door before beginning to rush to the hallway.

The older one has one eyebrow tensed, his eyes averted downward and tracing circles in the floor before him like he might still be putting words together in his mind. The little girl stares up at the man, her small hooded eyes wide and expecting. And finally, the younger boy cowers, his head sunk into his neck and his eyebrows slanted up with his eyes shifted to the side, large and glassy. He shakes, shivering, and bites his lip, which quivers with each sharp and labored inhale. He has his legs buckled in like he's hiding something between them, like he wants to hide, tuck himself between them. Little droplets land on the ground before him, and he takes the toe of his leather shoe and swipes away at them.

" _Stop that_ ," the man snarls. "I said, _stop_ that."

The woman stops walking when she hears the sound of heels clacking fast from their left, reverberating in the hallway, until a voice snips, "And what's all this, why have you summoned me here, Logan, you know I'm busy with the decorations."

The little girl, the only one of the three children still keeping her eyes locked on the man's face, notices his jaw clench and his eyes nearly bulge out. "Decorations? Your fucking decorations? Take a look at this, would you? Would you now? Did you notice your children have been playing with the fucking pigs outside, then?"

As the woman peers around with an eyebrow raised, amused if not annoyed, a small voice yelps from behind them, "Kendall- Ken- Kendall was- was going to lock me up in the pound! He- he locked me in there, he was- I don't wanna eat dog food, Mommy-"

The woman tilts her head at the small, whimpering child with both eyebrows turned up, almost like in sympathy. She takes a step closer toward him, the little boy who is now blubbering incoherent noises, and when she reaches him, the boy blinks up at her between tears. Gingerly, loosely, she cups the boy's face with one hand, and sighs, before turning around again. She chuckles while shaking her head like it's all a funny little meaningless distraction. Gone as fast as it came. The little boy's face falls.

"Oh, you think this is fucking funny, Caroline? You leave the children here with one being a fucking idiot-" —one side of the younger boy's mouth twitches and he makes a sad hiccup— "- and-"

She offers him a long, indifferent blink, before turning to the other woman and saying, "Would you fetch Romulus a new suit and pair of shoes, then?"

"Caroline-"

The woman then begins to follow the other, huffing out with a chuckle, "Just get them dressed again, you know, and we'll have somebody clean up-" —she waves lazily toward the wooden panels and red floral rug beneath the smaller boy, at which the boy takes a clumsy step back as if to avoid her gesture— "-that, and-"

"Caroline!"

Another woman comes out from beyond the corner and in a distant voice says, "Lady Roy-"

"Collingwood Roy," the woman corrects.

"Yes, uh- Collingwood Roy. Lady Collingwood Roy, the flowers are ready."

The woman keeps herself facing the family's direction while walking a few steps away, then gives a nod with raised eyebrows toward the man while quipping out a 'wonderful' in response to the other woman to her right.

"Useless, you're all _fucking_ useless!" yells the man, indistinctly toward the figures walking away from him, but pointedly to the woman whose back is now turned with her heels clicking far down the hallway. The little girl stares with her eyes narrowed at the woman walking away. The man gives out a rough exhale.

Just the four, then—the man, the older boy, the younger, and the little girl.

The man, his nostrils flared, takes a hand to his forehead and presses his pointer finger and thumb into the opposite temples, muttering under his breath while pacing the ground, "Your mother, I swear to fucking god-" Then, at once, each child tenses their small shoulders when they hear the man's voice call out, " _Kendall_."

"Dad, I-"

A smaller voice crashes the quiet murmur, and stutters, "He was gonna lock- in the pound, Dad- I hate it in there-"

The older one snaps, "You don't hate it in there, you're the one who came up with-"

"I don't wanna go in there!"

The little girl stays silent, only keeping her eyes darting between each of the others in the room.

" _Enough_."

"But Daddy!" the smaller boy cries, sobbing through forced blinks, and, pleading, he runs up to the man. Then, he makes the mistake of reaching for the man's hand, to which the man steps back in repulsion.

" _Enough_ , I said," the man bellows as he grabs the wrist of the younger boy and brings his open hand down onto it. On contact, the younger boy yelps, and he squeezes his eyes shut, squeezing and squeezing them closed until maybe his crying might stop and the pain might end and everything and everybody around him might burn up in flames, and go away forever.

A beat of silence between them all. The man shakes his wrist out and inhales through his teeth. The older boy stares with wide eyes at the now-relaxed hand of the man, swinging at his side appearing detached from the rest of his stout and tensed body. The little girl turns her head between the man, the younger boy, the older boy, then back to the younger and begins to step toward him before letting a rush of fear seize her.

She notices the man's eyes blink around the room, wide like they could shout and scream themselves. But he is only silent. She stays in her place.

The man inhales. And exhales.

"Kendall," the man beckons, somehow forcing out the boy's name through a strained strip of air. "This was _your_ mess. Be a grown man and take responsibility for it. You come with me, now."

With his face turned away from the two other children, the taller boy's eyebrows pull together, and his mouth begins to wrinkle and shake. He begins to murmur out, "Okay, Da-"

"Now, Kendall." The man commands, and he moves past the older boy and up the stairs, toward the closest bedroom, with forceful and exhausted steps.

The older boy stands frozen, still keeping his face hidden from the two other children, with all of them knowing what's about to happen. He takes one of his hands in the other and rolls the inner one around in a desperate attempt to collect himself.

In the split second when he finds just a moment to catch his breath and begins to move, and now with the man's back turned, he turns his head around and steals a glance at the others. The little girl now stands with her feet planted, and one hand wrapped around the wrist of the young boy behind her like she wants to show to nobody in particular that she is brave enough to protect him, though every immediate threat has now passed. She flicks her eyes up, and sticks her tongue out at the taller boy. The younger one stares with an angry, sad, and furrowed brow in the direction of the older, and upon realizing the other boy is now looking back at him, yanks his wrist out from the little girl's hand.

"Hey!" she snips at him.

"Kendall, up, now. I will not repeat myself."

The older one turns his head back around and begins ascending the staircase, following the man upward. At the same moment his hesitant foot reaches the last stair, the woman from before, the first woman who came to fetch the older boy, returns. On her wrist is perched a cedar wood hanger, with a freshly pressed suit jacket, crisp white shirt, and pants folded onto it.

"Romulus, Siobhan, Kendall, you may come with me," she says until she glances around the open, lavish foyer. "Where is Kendall?"

Simultaneously, both pairs of eyes slide upward.

"Ah." She clears her throat and averts her gaze. "Very well then. You two, come with me."

" _Please_ come with me," the young boy mutters under his breath, batting his eyelashes seeming to mock the woman. The little girl rolls her eyes.

The woman glances at the boy wordlessly, then turns around and begins walking.

The two small children trail behind the woman into the hallway, and the patter of their shoes echo down its walls. The little girl bumps her shoulder in play against the boy's. He flinches at first, then blinks and smiles, and whispers back a "hey!" before pushing against hers. Little murmurs travel down the hall—the little boy's recently-learned favorite, "sandwich-maker," followed by their well-used inventory of "ugly," "stupidhead," and "dummy."

Back in the family area, replete with its floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, restored cushions and chaise, and deep green potted ferns, the fire flickers in its place, steady and constant as ever. The night around it is warm, and inviting, and the fire's smoke directed up and up, far up a tall channel, up the chimney, and blown away by the wind. The room is left quiet, and, as if it could be swiped off with a discerning finger, a thick atmosphere hangs over it, dripping, waxy, on its walls.

  


###### Epilogue

A small crunching from the last room on the right. Little feet scrape across the ground, taking dead sticks and leaves with them that bunch and bunch into piles with every drag of those feet until the piles get too large, and the legs pick up and start again.

Inside, a little boy lets himself into the rabbit hatch that takes up the far corner of the bright and spacious room. The wooden structure—part miniature house, part metal cage—has been left wide open for the next hour while its usual inhabiter, a small baby bunny, and its little girl owner enjoy the afternoon sun outside with her caretaker.

"Kendall," the boy whispers under his breath to himself while his mouth frowns into a grimace and he crawls further into the corner. "Dickhead."

He sticks his tongue out and shuts his eyes, turning his head in revulsion, when his knee happens to dig into a pile of chewed and spat-out pellets. "Ew," he lets out. He takes a pile of sticks and uses them to scrape the paste off his skin.

He feels disgust. He feels like shaking. He feels excited. He feels bad. He feels good. He scrunches his nose up and curls his hand, then uses it like a paw against his leg. He lets out a small, little bark.

A few moments pass, and he's already rounded the corner twice and shaken his body as if to dry any fur of rainwater. His leg starts rattling from impatience and he bares his teeth. He barks again, louder now. This time, he hears a familiar pat of feet approach and he shakes himself again.

An older boy walks in the door. Startled, the boy jerks his head back and spits out, "Roman? What- what are you doing in there?"

The younger only offers a little bark.

"Uh- okay. You're being funny."

The younger boy smiles at this, and the older one tiptoes closer until he's crouched down with his hands curled into the outer metal fence. He wiggles his fingers in a taunt, and then arches his eyebrows. His lips turns up when he opens his mouth, and he begins barking. Bark, bark, bark, but not like a dog, not like a boy talking to a dog—like a human jeering at another. The older boy laughs. "Play dead, Ro-ro!"

The younger boy frowns. But with a kick of his leg, he upends a little pile of dried grass lining the bottom of the hutch. He curls himself into a ball in the corner, puts his head into the crook of his elbow, and pretends to nap.

The older boy snorts. "You're a fucking weirdo."

Now, the smaller boy opens one of his eyes. He begins to stick his lower lip out. He pauses, starting to bend a leg into a more human shape, but then folds it back down. Instead, he protests, "No, I'm not."

"Oh, are you gonna _cry_?"

At this, the smaller boy's eyes gloss over, and the tiny veins in them make themselves swell against his will. He turns his head into the shadow of the hatch's back corner, and sniffles.

"Weird! And dirty, and ugly! And..." The older boy's voice hitches and, for a brief moment, his face solidifies and his eyes go to stone. "And you're a _mess_. You're messy." The older one feels blood rush back to his head, and he begins to hiccup in laughter at his own jokes. His voice is nasal and cracking from being forced a little too deep.

"No I'm not! No I'm not! No I'm not!"

The older boy jumps up and runs to the opposite end of the room, where he grabs a stick placed knowingly under one of the floor cushions, then jams it into the door in place of a lock. He mocks ' _ha ha ha_ ' when the little boy rushes to the wire gate and attempts to shake it open.

"Stop! Stop it!" he cries in a shaky voice while his small hands attempt to fit through the fence, but the openings are even smaller, too small.

"You're the one who put yourself in there... fucking freak."

"I- I only-"

"Because you're a mess, and you're an idiot."

"No! No!" The little one wails out, now sitting with his legs crossed and one arm sticking out, his finger pointing, trembling, toward the ground underneath the older boy.

"What? What?"

"I only- because-"

The older boy raises his seated body and looks below him with his eyebrows knotted tight and his head shaking in irritation, until he accidentally knocks the backside of his hip with his heel and feels a pang of soreness shoot up his side. He takes a sharp inhale through his teeth, and catches a glance of the younger boy's large, now inflamed eyes when he does. He immediately stands up and takes a step back.

Without words, the older boy crouches down just enough and pulls the stick out of the door's metal loop, where the lock should have been and once was. Ever since they started all of this, after the incident with the little girl and her bunny (when, as it seemed, she briefly set it free), the padlock that had first been there had been lost. The little girl swore up and down that she had never done it, until she admitted that she did, but that she never knew where the lock may have been.

But one day when the two were chasing each other around, the open cage led to the younger boy's idea, which led to the younger finding himself in there and the older boy out, and so on. Sometimes, the younger boy would wriggle the stick free with luck if it wasn't placed just right, which led to the older's frustration. Many times, the older wished he had a padlock instead. But nobody had since bothered to replace it.

They never knew who had the lock. They never knew who had the key.

Two years later, for unknown reasons, the bunny disappeared from its hutch. The man, the only man who lived in the house, discovered the younger boy in its place shortly after. Upon seeing this, the woman who often dwelled in the opposite wing laughed. The older boy shook his head until the man dragged him by the wrist to the other room. The little girl watched until waved away by the woman. Another woman came some time after to release the younger boy. And then they all left.

Another quiet room then. Another like the many rooms and corridors and corners of the too-large residence, quiet from having the air too heavy to hear another sound through it.

One year after that, the cage was gone. The room stayed silent.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thinking about [this interview](https://www.thewhitereview.org/feature/interview-jamieson-webster/) with Jamieson Webster by Fiona Alison Duncan, both who I heard about for the first time from there. They talk about Jamieson Webster and her relationship with psychoanalysis, and also about family, shit (like dookie), money, politics, and sexuality. My perfect match for the Roy siblings.
> 
> "[W]hatever is going on with the siblings is a screen for whatever is going on with the parents. But siblings can track each other throughout a lifetime ... they’re watching each other unconsciously forever."
> 
> I'm so obsessed with this family and these kids and this cast and the writers and the crew. Their minds... their fucking minds!


End file.
